Rome wasn’t built in a day

ROME, as the old expression goes, wasn’t built in a day. Translated, it’s a phrase you use when saying it takes a long time to do an important job.

It’s a phrase worth considering when wondering about Northwest Community College.

Saddled with a debt and an escalating deficit the college cut spending and laid off workers while trying to reinvent itself as the trades training centre for the region based on large projects either underway or planned.

In early fall senior college officials appeared before city council asking for support in lobbying the province for $45 million for a new trades facility at its Terrace campus.

Ambitious? Yes. Reasonable? Absolutely given the kinds of expenditures at other BC colleges.

But unstated back then and not widely known until now was the college’s decision to suspend its heavy duty mechanics program. Turns out enrolment was dropping because the kind of equipment used for training was too old for modern day job requirements. Ouch.

A revival of the program depends upon the college receiving a fair share of $17 million the province says it will spend on trades training.

When that is to happen no one knows but expect it to be bundled up with the province’s self-proclaimed BC Jobs Plan.

Rome was founded in 753 BC and is now more than 2,500 years old. Let’s hope the college gets its money much sooner than that.

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